


More than what the galaxy has done to you

by spaceyquill



Category: Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, MayThe4th Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-04
Updated: 2020-05-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:40:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23990200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaceyquill/pseuds/spaceyquill
Summary: The Jedi smoothed out her skirts around her. “My name’s Othet, by the way. What’s yours?”“Darth Occlus,” Joah said.“Oh, we’re using our made up names? Then I’m the Barsen’thor.”
Relationships: Female Jedi Consular | Barsen'thor/Male Sith Inquisitor
Comments: 2
Kudos: 31
Collections: May the 4th Be With You Star Wars Fanworks Exchange 2020





	More than what the galaxy has done to you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Llwyden ferch Gyfrinach (Llwyden)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Llwyden/gifts).



The massive cave system Talos Drellik had led him to was the first good thing Joah had seen on this Force-forsaken ice planet. The Sith assumed that Ilum would be no different than Hoth—which wrapped up all his miseries from Korriban and plunked them in the “not so bad, comparatively” pile before drowning them in snow—but somehow, inexplicably, Ilum was worse. Colder. Emptier. The lekku muffs that had worked well enough on Hoth now felt non-existent. Joah was convinced that his breath froze in mid-air and left a visual, suspended trail charting their progress all the way from the Imperial zone. The tunnel the two men explored insulated the cold to be sure Joah never escaped it, but at least they escaped the sharp wind. 

Joah led the way, holding his lightsaber high above his head with only one purple blade humming. At his side, Drellik kept darting ahead, but then had to curtail his enthusiasm and wait for the Sith to catch up and light the way. 

“Oh, can you just imagine if we find traces of bygone civilizations?” cried Drellik. His voice, already shrill with excitement, echoed off the cave walls into an even higher pitch. “The other lads in the Reclamation Service will be _fighting_ to get posted here!” 

“I imagine someone might even throw a shoe,” deadpanned Joah. 

“I expect troopers would break it up before it got that extreme, my lord!” chuckled Drellik unironically as they entered a natural chamber of sorts, where three different cave systems collided. Drellik immediately broke out a handheld scanner and diverted to the nearest wall, but Joah remained watching the caves. Something was coming. A faint light emanated from one tunnel, sharpening into a single yellow lightsaber blade. 

Joah lowered his weapon into a defensive stance, painfully aware that the Empire had not alerted him of any other Sith on the planet, and it had been half an age since he and Drellik had passed the last Imperial zone marker. This was somebody from the Republic side of the planet.

Joah didn’t feel the cold now as he strode forward, positioning himself between an oblivious Drellik and the encroaching strangers. The lightsaber wielder was a woman, who handled her single yellow blade like a weapon now, herself. Joah spared consideration for the Trandoshan accompanying her long enough to decide he wasn’t a threat. 

“I think you might’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere,” Joah called to them. The Trandoshan hissed back. 

“We’re just passing through,” the Jedi responded. The only thing behind Joah was Imperial territory. 

“This is as far as you go,” said Joah. 

“Oh! Oh my,” Drellik said behind him, and Joah heard the familiar scuffle of the man scrounging for his blaster. The Jedi made no move to leave, so Joah ignited his balancing blade. The Trandoshan gave a growl and lunged at him, the staff from his back now swinging in his scaly hands. Joah pushed with the Force and he went flying against the wall, only for his Jedi to rush forward. Her lightsaber came down. The resulting _crack!_ of their blades colliding shook the entire cavern. Joah and the Jedi froze, lightsabers hissing, as stone fractured around them. Joah felt the premonition of falling a moment before the ground gave way beneath him—and he fell. 

An underground chasm yawned below him. Lightsaber disengaged, he reached out to the stalactites lining what had just become the ceiling. He snagged one with the Force. It snapped in half. The ground surged up to meet him. Joah slowed himself in the Force just enough to only hit the ground like a _half_ ton of durasteel. A thump of a second body landed right next to him. 

Pain exploded belatedly, but bright enough in Joah’s mind to make up for the lapse. He’d landed on his lekku funny and now the searing pain made tottering to his feet an ordeal. He had to check and make sure they were both still there; it would’ve felt no different if the Jedi had lopped off his blue lek with her lightsaber. No, they were both still attached, but one was bent at a sharp angle. He vented his misery in a strained hiss. It was very possible that everyone inside his head was screaming simultaneously as well, but all he registered was white-hot _pain._

Far above, one of Drellik’s measly emergency lights broke across the uneven stalactites ringing the hole in the ceiling. “My lord! Did you survive?!”

“Give me a minute and I’ll let you know!” Joah cried. He hunched in on himself, only half aware of the Jedi’s feet as she neared him. He tried to back away, but all he could do was breathe like a hissing Balmorran rock-scrabbler. The only thing Joah succeeded in doing was falling to one knee. 

“Oh, no. You’re hurt!” It was a wonder her soft voice could break through at all. A moment later she was gone from his field of watery vision and then a dulling feeling crawled up his throbbing lek. 

He couldn’t even process what was happening; it felt like water doused his lek for as quickly as the pain quelled. Feeling came back, and more than her hands on his appendage, Joah could feel an abundance of the Force flowing into him. His breathing evened out. A part of him wished she would never stop, so when the feeling abated and the Jedi released his lek, Joah barely restrained himself from reaching after her to pull her back. Instead, Joah let himself sit, catching his breath. The Jedi circled him to sit a little further away than a lightsaber’s reach.

 _Thank you_ got lodged somewhere between his brain and his mouth, and all he could manage in the newfound silence was, “Why?” Even the Force ghosts seemed to be at a loss for words. 

“I can’t have word getting out that I, a healer, refused to heal someone. My license could get revoked!” she said, a hint of a smile shining through in her voice. “I’m impressed that after such a fall, a single bent lek is all you suffered.”

“The Empire’s standard elevator design is exceptionally tall and slow; I’m used to dropping great heights.”

She pulled out a personal communicator in the stretch of silence that followed, and Joah studied her as she tinkered with it. She was a Zabrak with clean lines tattooed down her face. Her long dark hair was braided in numerous plaits starting from her temples and corresponded with her symmetrically pleasing horns. For some reason, a self-conscious heat flared in him at the thought of the branding marring his face, forced on him from a time prior to being a Sith. Nothing like her elegant tattoos. 

Joah’s gaze skirted the ground and instead he took in his surroundings just to rid himself of those thoughts. Contrasting sharply to the frigid caves above, this expansive chamber housed different pools of hot springs, separated by thin ledges of rocks. It was a wonder both he and the Jedi had managed to miss the water. 

“My lord? Can you reach this?” Drellik shouted from overhead. A rope unrolled from the hole in the ceiling, stretching barely a fourth of the way to the ground. It was a distance Joah knew he couldn’t span on his own, but with another Force user… He looked to the Zabrak.

“And which one of us is going to trust the other to be charitable?” she asked distractedly; most of her attention was still funneled into trying to make a handheld communicator work. 

Despite the Jedi healing him, Joah certainly wouldn’t volunteer to let her lift him, and he expected she had the same suspicions about him.

“So, since we’re bound to be stuck here in neutral territory for awhile, what do you say to a truce?” asked the Jedi.

“Please can someone tell this brute to stop looking at me like that? I think he’s going to eat me!” called Drellik. 

“Qyzen, go get Nadia—she can help!” the Jedi ordered, pocketing her communicator. 

Silence followed. Joah assumed that had solved matters.

The Jedi smoothed out her skirts around her. “My name’s Othet, by the way. What’s yours?”

“Darth Occlus,” Joah said. 

“Oh, we’re using our made up names? Then I’m the Barsen’thor.”

Under any other circumstances, Joah would’ve scowled, but there was a natural teasing to Othet that—Joah allowed her the benefit of the doubt—was good-natured. So he reined in a snarl. 

“My title was my ticket out of Imperial slavery; I’d rather hold onto it.”

Othet averted her gaze and said nothing. Joah felt a selfish spike of pleasure at having guilted her into silence, but when that silence dragged on, he began to wish he’d kept that to himself.

“Fine. I agree to a truce.” He made a show of setting his double-bladed lightsaber hilt in the space between them. “What business took you toward Imperial territory?”

“I was accompanying my friend on his hunt for the biggest game he can find. It’s a cultural thing.” She looked at him appraisingly before adding her lightsaber to the middle distance. “And y’all?”

“If you’re going to be down there awhile, my lord, would you perhaps look around for signs of past civilizations?” came Drellik’s hesitant voice. Joah pointed to the ceiling hole, and his companion’s timely answer. 

Othet perked up. “People used to live here?” 

“No,” Joah said automatically. He turned his attention to the ceiling. “If Ashara and Xalek don’t already know of this unfortunate situation, what are you still doing here?” A stammered apology preceded Drellik dropping something into the chasm before running away, and Joah and Othet were left completely alone. 

Reaching out, Joah slowed the falling object and pulled it into his hand. Drellik’s scanner. 

“Well,” chirped Othet, “might as well.” The scanner flew out of Joah’s grasp and into Othet’s as she rose to her feet with surprising grace. Her sudden movement had Joah’s other hand reaching for his lightsaber hilt, but the Jedi was fully engrossed in figuring out the technology. 

“That’s specialized archeology equipment. Do you even know how to—”

She scanned him. “It says you’re made up of ninety percent angry. It works!” Othet edged along the hot springs, scanning as she went and being met most times with an error beep. Joah pushed himself up, expecting she might drop the scanner into the water at any moment. 

“How can you be so nonchalant about our current situation?” he asked. 

“If you weren’t lying when you agreed to a truce, then I have to trust you’re not going to try anything, and I can just enjoy the absurdity of the situation. Nobody’s going to believe I was isolated with a member of the Dark Council. This will make such a story!” 

Joah stiffened. “I didn’t know you knew who I was.” Now, her nonchalance was even more baffling—especially because every step she took drew her further away from their lightsabers. 

“I recognize your title. Surprised that you’re so young, though.” She glanced back at him and he could’ve sworn she flashed an appreciative smile before returning to the scanner. 

Joah found himself following closer. “You expected a Council member to be old?”

“Positively ancient. Ugly, too.” She reached the wall and waved the scanner in long sweeps. “I guess even the Empire has its lookers.” 

Joah ran a gloved hand down the symbols scarred into his cheek. A question bloomed in his mind that he immediately swatted aside. It was stupid; absurd even. But he wouldn't get another chance to cross paths with a Jedi healer and she _was_ into the absurd. “Would… would you even be able to heal these?” 

Othet stalled her movement as she took him in. She put the scanner down and approached him with a sudden levity, studying first his facial brands and then all of him. “I could. Would it do you any good?” 

The bluntness of her question hit him harder than the ground had. The single driving motivation through all his years training as a Sith was to never again be as powerless as he was on Ziost, during his enslavement before his Force proficiency had been discovered. The slave drivers had branded him, and Joah had had to wear his slave designation through the halls of Korriban and the society of Dromund Kaas, where the people who couldn’t stand to see him be considered their peer knew exactly what it meant. 

And Joah didn’t know how to explain any of this. 

Othet removed one glove and let her fingers ghost along the symbols on his cheek. Even lacking feeling around his scarring, Joah knew this was the gentlest anyone had ever touched him before. He wanted to lean into it, but no… that would be weird. So instead he stood there and let a Jedi he just met inspect him in a way that felt outrageously intimate. 

“Skin, especially facial skin, takes more time than a broken bone or torn muscle. It’s a delicate process. Even if I have enough time to repair your face, there’s nothing I can do for all the pain you carry around inside of you. This branding is more than superficial.” He felt her fingers splay across his cheek, and this time he really did lean into it, ever so subtly. 

Joah registered her warmth through his glove as he pressed his own hand against hers, holding her to his face. “You could start with the outer scarring and work your way inward.”

Othet managed a grin. 

“Master?!” a shrill, feminine voice shouted from the level above. 

Othet’s head snapped up. “Nadia! I’m down here!” 

“Hang on, I’ll get you out of there!” 

Joah released the Jedi and took a step back. The heat from the hot springs suddenly felt oppressive. Othet’s lightsaber vaulted from the ground into her grip, and as she returned to where they had fallen, she spared a glance at the Sith. 

“Your people are coming for you, right?”

He nodded, not quite knowing what to say now that the moment was broken, and they had to return to who they used to be—two people from different sides of the war. A look of sympathy crossed her face and she drew closer once more. 

“You are more than what the galaxy has done to you,” Othet said. It sounded like a phrase that fell distinctly in the Jedi platitudes camp, but it was one Joah had never heard before, and so he took it as sweetly as it was intended. Then he wrapped one arm around Othet and pulled her into a kiss. 

Once he let her go, Joah finally got to see what the Barsen’thor looked like startled. 

“That’s not where I saw that going,” she said, backing up once more toward the exit with a reddening face. 

“We’re never going to see each other again, so I figured why not.” The last he saw of Othet was her wearing a comically confused expression as her padawan pulled her back up to the surface. That had to be the best Jedi he had ever met.

Joah held out a hand and his lightsaber flew into his grasp just before the ground gave way with a lurch and he heaved up into the painful cold of the caves above. 

His feet found the floor and he expected to see his apprentices around, but it was the Jedi and her padawan, heading back toward the Republic zone, their Trandoshan eyeing him carefully. 

Intimidation wasn’t worth the effort when he was freezing, and Joah immediately turned tail for the safety—and warmth—of Imperial space. Halfway to the mouth of the cave and the hideous wind, he ran into Drellik leading Ashara and Xalek. 

All their questions came out at once, not a single one discernible. 

“Cave’s haunted,” he called, pushing through their stalled group. 

“What?!” Drellik cried ecstatically. 

“I’m kidding, it’s not. I’m freezing. I’m going back to the ship.” 

“My lord, you wouldn’t by chance happen to have my scanner on hand? M… my lord?”


End file.
